China’s new Charity Law represents the culmination of over a decade of planning for the appropriate development of the productive forces of the charity sector in aid of socialist modernization. Together with the related Foreign NGO Management Law, it represents an important advance in the organization of the civil society sector within emerging structures of Socialist Rule of Law principles. While both Charity and Foreign NGO Management Laws could profitably be considered as parts of a whole, each merits discussion for its own unique contribution to national development. One can understand, both the need to manage Chinese civil society within the context of charity ideals, and the need to constrain foreign non-governmental organizations to ensure national control over its own development. Moreover, the decision to invite global comment also evidenced Chinese understanding of the global ramifications of its approach to the management of its civil society, and its importance in the global discourse about consensus standards for that management among states. This becomes more important as Chinese civil society try to emerge onto the world stage. This essay considers the role of the Charity Law in advancing Socialist Modernization through the realization of the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) Basic Line. The essay is organized as follows: Section II considers the specific provisions of the Charity Law, with some reference to changes between the first draft and the final version of the Charity Law. Section III then considers some of the more theoretical considerations that suggest a framework for understanding the great contribution of the Charity Law as well as the challenges that remain for the development of the productive forces of the civil society sector at this historical stage of China’s development.

This essay explores what, if anything, it means for the Federal Court of Appeal to be a “court of equity” in the exercise of its jurisdiction over matters related to charitable registration under the Income Tax Act. The equitable jurisdiction over charities encompasses a number of curative principles, which the Court of Chancery traditionally invoked to save indefinite or otherwise defective charitable gifts. The author identifies some of these equitable principles and contemplates how their invocation might have altered the course of certain unsuccessful charitable registration appeals. She then considers the principal arguments for and against the Federal Court of Appeal applying these equitable principles when adjudicating matters related to registered charity status.

In Marcel Mauss's analysis, the gift exists in the context of a homogenous system of values. But in fact, different types of normative systems can inhabit the same social field. This is the case among Hui, the largest Muslim minority group in China, for whom the “freedom” of the gift resides in the giver's capacity to follow the rules underlying gifting, in this case, the rules of sharia. I call this capacity “minjian (unofficial, popular) autonomy.” Hui follow sharia in pursuit of a good life, but their practices are also informed by mainstream Han Chinese gift practices and by the anxieties of the security state. In their gifting practices, Hui thus endeavor to reconcile the demands of Islamic, postsocialist, and gift economies.

When it comes to the regulation of non-profits, the European Commission experiences many of the same pressures and constraints faced by national charity regulators. It suffers, however, from an added disadvantage in that, arguably, it lacks jurisdictional competence to regulate non-profits qua non-profits. This article explores the consequences of the Commission’s unsuccessful attempt to secure the passage of its proposal for a European Foundation Statute (‘EFS’). Notwithstanding the European Council’s inability to muster the necessary Member State unanimity required to pass the proposal and its subsequent demise, the Commission is still dogged by the problems it identified as giving rise to the need for the EFS in the first instance. Against this background, Part I reviews the rationale for the EFS proposal, the political concerns that left it vulnerable to veto and the structural challenges faced by the Commission in legislating for non-profits at a European level. The argument is advanced that extant a purely functional approach, European regulation of nonprofits from ‘the inside out’ is difficult in the absence of a valid treaty basis.

Part II proceeds to examine recent NGO attempts to influence the Financial Action Task Force (‘FATF’) reform process (supported by the European Commission) and to demand a fairer process under FATF Recommendation 8 for dealing with NGOs. The European Commission’s role in assisting NGOs to bring pressure on the FATF to be more accountable and transparent in its dealings presents an interesting vignette of one regulator laying siege to another for the greater good of better non-profit oversight. Arguably, the Commission’s attempts at ‘regulating from the outside in’ has led to it demanding a higher level of transparency of the FATF than it has been willing to provide to NGOs itself in the past, while simultaneously enhancing Commission-NGO relations. The article concludes that it is now timely for the European Commission to be alert to the possibilities of regulating from the outside in on occasions when it may not be so possible to regulate from the inside out.

This working paper discusses the case for research on regulatory policy toward social entrepreneurship and specifically pertains to regulatory policy toward social ventures. The main theme of this working paper is the regulatory neutrality toward various shades of social entrepreneurship and its secondary subject is the convergence of policies toward THE private and public sectors. As such, this working paper touches upon company law, tax law and commercial aspects of the regulation of activities conducted by charities, NGOs, etc.

In recent decades, the charitable landscape worldwide has undergone a significant transformation first with respect to using business methods in support of social missions (social enterprises) and, second, with regard to combining social missions with make-money paradigm (social ventures). The austerity measures in the Western hemisphere, commercialisation/privatisation of state-owned enterprises in post-communist countries and an economic slowdown in Asian “tiger” nations all necessitated a rise of private charity self-supported by social entrepreneurship as a substitute for governmental action. Social ventures have been proliferating in this environment, yet have suffered from public-policies (fiscal environment, inflexibility of the design of business organisations) confined to not-for-profit social enterprises, and lawmakers everywhere have largely failed to address this problem.

The time is therefore ripe for revisiting representative policy models, and to defend the claim that efficient regulatory policies can be neutral toward various shades of social entrepreneurship and well integrate social ventures to the overall benefit of society. A dogma (that not-for-profit social enterprises can better substitute for governmental action than their for-profit counterparts because only the former can enjoy specific governmental supports and receive private donations) shall be dispelled by offering a number of flexible mechanism allowing rewarding private mission-driven business organisations according to the scope of their mission and regardless of their not-for-profit status.

Such research essentially demands perusal of policy and legislative documents produced roughly in the post-2005 period in a number of jurisdictions (mostly Anglo-Saxon like the UK, Vermont followed by other states, British Columbia, but also South Korea) where lawmakers took on the issue of social ventures but, all as one, adopted only fragmentary solutions which did not disenchant the for-profit or not-for profit binary mindset. Identified problems (definition of charity, limits of the scope of business operations of social enterprises, non-distribution constraint etc. on the side of not-for-profits and non-deductibility of mission-related expenses etc. by for-profits) need to be deconstructed one by one toward a complex system reflecting the entire spectrum of social entrepreneurs and based on the principle that the more mission the more governmental privileges, yet more supervision.

Such a complex system would include a number of novel solutions. The commonly accepted general profit-tax exemption for not-for-profits shall be discarded in favour of wider deductibility of charitable expenses combined with exemption of donations (including charitable price premiums in excess of market prices paid by donors for commercial goods or services). The non-distribution constraint (banning dividends or equity rights in dissolution) shall strictly reflect paid-in donations thereby balancing the interests of investors and donors. Finally, a simplistic supervision system requiring periodical reporting to public authorities shall be discarded in favour of a system balancing interests of public and private (donors) stakeholders in the fashion of corporate governance in public companies.

Such solutions could be universally applicable and could be used not only for private social entrepreneurship but also for preserving the social functions of gradually privatised state-owned enterprises.

This week would not be complete without an Olympics-related post. Just before the opening ceremonies, the Washington Post ran a story titled "Olympic executives cash in on a 'Movement" that keeps athletes poor." It draws a sharp contrast between the actual athletes, who absent a rare endorsement deal or a sport with a lucrative professional league are generally scrounging funds from family and friends to support their training, and the employees and "volunteer" board members of the numerous national and international sports federations and Olympic Committees who often make hundreds of thousands of dollars annually or enjoy generous perks such as first-class air travel. This not to say all athletes are uncompensated; the article details the complicated baseline pay and bonus systems in place for many US athletes, but the amounts available to athletes vary enormously depending on the sport and the potential for medalling.

Such disparities are also not unique to the Olympics. Many have pointed to the college sports system, particularly FBS football and Division 1 basketball programs, as exhibiting the same disparities between the (student) athletes, few of whom make it to the lucrative professional level, and coaches & administrators. Such disparities also exist even in youth sports, where, for example, the President & CEO of Little League Baseball Incorporated received compensation of close to $500,000 from all related entities according to the group's 2014 Form 990, although that amount seems relatively reasonable once it is acknowledged that he is responsible for running an almost $30 million a year organization (including over $8 million in broadcasting rights payments) that has over 400 employees and involves millions of children. And, as John Colombo (Illinois) has discussed in this space, both the college programs and the U.S. Olympic Committee continue to enjoy favorable tax treatment despite the increasing commerciality of their activities because of "analytical inertia" that has let the law of charities stagnant while the world moved on.

Since 9/11 the relationships between charities and government anti-terrorism agencies have been strained, with government officials wary that the cross-border movements of money and people that many charities facilitate were vulnerable to being used as vehicles for the support of terrorist activity. Charities have responded with efforts to both tighten controls over such movements and to educate government officials regarding how charities can and do minimize the risk of such diversions. Earlier this summer those efforts bore fruit with the decision by the global Financial Action Task Force to change its guidance regarding charities (known as Recommendation Eight) to clarify that they are not inherently at risk of terrorist abuse, as reported by Third Sector (UK). The revised Recommendation Eight now reads:

Countries should review the adequacy of laws and regulations that relate to non-profit organisations which the country has identified as being vulnerable to terrorist financing abuse. Countries should apply focused and proportionate measures, in line with the risk-based approach, to such non-profit organisations to protect them from terrorist financing abuse, including:

(a) by terrorist organisations posing as legitimate entities;

(b) by exploiting legitimate entities as conduits for terrorist financing, including for the purpose of escaping asset-freezing measures; and

(c) by concealing or obscuring the clandestine diversion of funds intended for legitimate purposes to terrorist organisations.

Unfortunately, just last week the news broke that Israel has charged the manager of World Vision's Gaza branch with infiltrating the charity on behalf of Hamas and diverting tens of millions of dollars to Hamas' military wing. (Coverage: NPR; NY Times; Washington Post/AP.) While Israeli officials emphasized that there was no evidence that World Vision was aware of the diversion, and World Vision is still reviewing the charges and the evidence supporting them and has expressed skepticism about the alleged amount at issue, the situation casts a cloud over the international work of the well-known charity.

This article examines the control framework for the supervision and oversight of charitable trusts in the common law world. It outlines the fundamental differences between private and public trusts that necessitate a separate enforcement regime for charitable trusts and explores the historical and political powers and duties of the Attorney General as parens patriae of charities. In light of the limitations of the Attorney General’s effective scrutiny, Part II considers the emergence of alternative charity regulators - from tax authorities to independent charity commissions - comparing the relative regulatory achievements of these agencies with that of the AG. Part III turns its attention to the role of the courts and tribunals in the enforcement of the interests of donors, beneficiaries and charitable entities. The article concludes in Part IV with a discussion of the merits and demerits of the charitable trust vis-à-vis the public benefit foundation.

The number of charitable organizations in Hong Kong has increased significantly despite unclear and lax regulation. A legislator has identified flaws in the present law and recommended changes. The proposed recommendations, however, do not consider the unique characteristics of Hong Kong. If implemented, they would not address the existing problems adequately. In order to tame the Asian Dragon, this article proposes an alternative model: self-regulation, which relies on the work of charity watchdogs.

Recent months have brought even further restrictions by governments in China, Egypt, and Russia on domestic nonprofits with foreign ties in China. Developments include:

Late last month China adopted a new Law on the Management of Domestic Activities of Overseas Nongovernmental Organizations. According to a helpful summary prepared by Mark Sidel (Wisconsin) for Foreign Policy, the law shifts oversight of foreign NGOs to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) by requiring such groups to register, be authorized by, and report to MPS and also to "find a Chinese partner organization [vetted in advance by MPS] to take responsibility for all of the foreign entity's work in China." This shift is significant because it places all such organizations under the direct jurisdiction of China's internal security apparatus. The Law also restricts the subject matter areas and, depending on the subject matter, geographic areas in which foreign NGOs can operate. The White House promptly raised concerns about the new law, even as foreign NGOs struggled to understand how it applies to them and their activities. Additional coverage: Boston Globe/AP; NY Times; The Guardian.

Egypt has launched criminal investigations of human rights activists and the organizations with which they are associated based on allegations that they took foreign funding to try to destabilize the country. An Egyptian court is currently considering whether to freeze the bank accounts and other assets of the targeted individuals, an action that could be followed by formal criminal charges that carry up to 25 years in prison, according to a recent NPR Morning Edition story. Additional coverage: LA Times; NY Times; The Guardian.

Russia recently outlawed the pro-democracy National Democratic Institute under a law that has been used against it and four other organizations with links to U.S. funders, according to the NY Times. The stated reason for the ban was that the group posed "a threat to the foundations of Russia's constitutional order and national security," a charge that both the group and the U.S. State Department rejected.

Good morning all! I just got an alert in my mailbox that Treasury has issued final regulations on equivalency determinations - you may all recall the proposed regulations that were issued in 2012.

I'm in the process of printing out the final regs and comparing them to the proposed regs, so I'll update the post later today. Bloomberg BNA's blurb on it says that the final regulations "incorporate the thrust of" the 2012 rules. I'll try to get some links up as soon as I can find them in a non-subscription database, although I know you can get them in both Bloomberg BNA and Tax Analyst already if you have access. Citation is T.D. 9740, RIN 1545-BL23.

EWW

Update at 6:30 p.m., 9/23/2015

I've not gotten all the way through the final regs to give you all a complete summary, but I wanted to mention a few highlights from the preamble:

It appears that the Regulations expand the definition of "qualified tax practitioner" for purposes of who can make equivalency determinations that can be relied upon in good faith.

The Regulations appear to scale back the ability of a charity to rely on a good faith affidavit as the sole means of making an equivalency determination. Briefly, it appears that you can rely on the information in good faith, but there needs to be an additional showing that the evaluation of the data and the equivalency determination based on that data occurred in a manner that demonstrates a knowledge of US tax law. In theory, anyway, there are more qualified tax practitioners (including folks that may be in house at the foundation) to help with such a determination, so it shouldn't (in theory again) be a significant bar to international grant making.

Some clarification on how long you can rely on written advice, which looks like (a) so long as there is no change in the law or otherwise for most things, except (b) two years for public charity determinations based on financials.

It looks like there may be limited opportunity to share equivalency determinations, but it can't be foundation to foundation - it may be that the first foundation has to authorize the release of that information to a second foundation from its qualified tax practitioner because only there would there be reasonable reliance. So not quite the equivalency determination banking that the sector wanted, but it may be a step in that direction.

Looks like donor advised funds can use these rules, at least for now, for purposes of compliance with Section 4966(d)(4).

A Chinese draft law treats the entire sector of foreign nonprofits as potential enemies of the state, placing them under the management of the Ministry of Public Security. To drive home the point, the law is being readied as part of a package of legislation that also includes a national-security law and an anti-terrorism law—and it contains similar language, according to Western legal experts who have studied the texts . . . Undoubtedly, the undercover operations of a few politically motivated nonprofits in China have complicated life for the vast majority offering philanthropic assistance. Foreign nonprofits are widely viewed as a bridgehead for subversion. Intensely suspicious of any networked activity it doesn’t directly control, the government is especially wary of the grants they scatter that have allowed the domestic NGO sector to flourish. In a preamble, the draft law says its aim is to protect the “rights and interests” of foreign NGOs while “promoting exchange and cooperation.” But it piles on new layers of bureaucracy. Nonprofits will have to pay tax and hire Chinese accountants to conduct regular audits. They will have to go through approved agencies to hire staff and recruit volunteers. To enforce compliance, police will have unchallenged rights to enter offices, seize documents and inspect bank accounts.

A 47-count indictment was unsealed early this morning in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, charging 14 defendants with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies, among other offenses, in connection with the defendants’ participation in a 24-year scheme to enrich themselves through the corruption of international soccer. The guilty pleas of four individual defendants and two corporate defendants were also unsealed today.

The defendants charged in the indictment include high-ranking officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the organization responsible for the regulation and promotion of soccer worldwide, as well as leading officials of other soccer governing bodies that operate under the FIFA umbrella. Jeffrey Webb and Jack Warner – the current and former presidents of CONCACAF, the continental confederation under FIFA headquartered in the United States – are among the soccer officials charged with racketeering and bribery offenses. The defendants also include U.S. and South American sports marketing executives who are alleged to have systematically paid and agreed to pay well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks to obtain lucrative media and marketing rights to international soccer tournaments.

I did some preliminary checking and learned that FIFA is a complicated Swiss based international charitable organization comprising several other national and international nonprofit and tax exempt organizations, including the U.S. Soccer Foundation. It seems rather axiomatic that when executives -- insiders and disqualified persons, likely -- use the organization's venue selection and contracting processes to extract bribes, kickbacks, and other illicit payments from third parties, the organization is being operated for private benefit. I wonder, though, about the extent to which an umbrella organization's misdeeds can cause legal issues for one or more of its member organizations, such as the U.S. Soccer Foundation. And even if the bribes and kickbacks constitute or indicate private benefit, would the organizations subject to U.S. law be able to point to their other activities to support an argument that whatever private benefit existed was substantially outweighed by their good deeds and therefore not fatal to tax exemption? Anyway, the whole topic, along with all the exhibits and so forth available online would make for good discussion fodder in a class or seminar dealing with tax exemption in the international arena. The L.A. Times has some useful articles on the subject.

Accepted wisdom, lore, or legend has it that LBJ, in the dead of night when nobody was paying attention, inserted the prohibition against campaign intervention because he was running for Senatorial reelection and he wanted to shut down opposition emanating from a Texas nonprofit. If that is true, we probably should have spoken up earlier and not deemed that action a harmless imposition on civil liberties. In the age of the GWOT, I admit that I sometimes shake my head at die hard civil libertarians who object to "every little" imposition on individual liberties undertaken for our own good, according to our government. I appreciate those impositions whenever I get on a plane. The danger is that when we get used to letting the little impositions go unchallenged, we are just asking for trouble at home or elsewhere, now or some time in the future. One day we wake up and all the little rights we took for granted are gone . . . . and by then its too late to say anything. I will resist the urge to quote Martin Niemoller here.

The U.S. and the EU are up in arms, and rightly so, I'm sure, about amendments to a 2012 Russian law giving "the Kremlin" more authority to crack down on "illegal activity" by NGO's. U.S. laws are not so draconian in their punishment of political activities by NGO's but I still wonder whether we ought to deal with "the log in our own eye" while we are condemning Russia's NGO law. I am not sure the same - that they are not draconian -- can be said of U.S. laws relating to NGO's suspected of allowing the use of their assets in support of terrorism. I have not read those provision in a while but I recall being troubled by the "before the facts are established" authority Executive Order 13224 gave the government; authority, it seemed to me, to just swoop in and shut a charity down under the umbrella of fighting terrorism. Whatever process was allowed under that order and subsequent laws comes only after the fact and presumably without use of funds previously frozen. When I read about the Russian NGO law this weekend and all the resulting criticism, I wondered about our own laws. For their part, and quite predictably, the Russians are claiming that in their recently amended NGO law they are doing no more than what the U.S. and many other countries have done in their treatment of political activity and terrorist support groups masquerading as tax exempt charities.

In 2012 Russia’s parliament adopted a law that required nongovernmental organizations (NGO)s to register as "foreign agents" with the Ministry of Justice if they engage in “political activity” and receive foreign funding. The definition of “political activity” under the law is so broad and vague that it can extend to all aspects of advocacy and human rights work. Initially, the law required all respective NGOs to request the Ministry to have them registered and implied legal consequences for failure to do so. Because in Russia “foreign agent” can be interpreted only as “spy” or “traitor,” there is little doubt that the law aims to demonize and marginalize independent advocacy groups. Russia’s vibrant human rights groups resolutely boycotted the law, calling it “unjust” and “slanderous.” In early March 2013 the Russian government launched a nationwide campaign of intrusive inspections of hundreds of NGOs to identify advocacy groups the government deems " foreign agents" and force them to register as such. After the inspection wave, at least 55 groups received warnings not to violate the law and at least 20 groups received official notices of violation directly requiring them to register as “foreign agents.” Also, the prosecutor’s office and Ministry of Justice filed at least 12 administrative cases against NGOs for failure to abide by the “foreign agents” law and at least six administrative cases against NGO leaders. Additionally, the prosecutors brought civil law suits against six NGOs for failure to register under the law. Since the law entered into force, numerous rights groups challenged the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Justice in courts; most lost their cases. As a result, by February 2015 at least 12 groups chose to shut down rather than wear the shameful “foreign agent” label, including Association of NGOs in Defense of Voters’ Rights “Golos”, JURIX (Lawyers for Constitutional Rights and Freedoms), the Moscow School of Civic Education (Moscow), Kostroma Center for Civic Initiatives Support, Anti-Discrimination Center (ADC) Memorial, Side by Side LGBT Film Festival, Coming Out, “Freedom of Information” Foundation, the League of Women Voters and Human Rights Resource Center (Saint-Petersburg), Center for Social Policy and Gender Studies and Association “Partnership for Development” (Saratov).

According to this news report, the latest amendments provide sweeping authority to the government to respond to "undesirable" NGO's engaging in vaguely defined activities, including prison sentences:

Under the law signed by president Vladimir Putin on Saturday evening, Russian prosecutors will be able to target foreign groups whose "undesirable activities" are deemed to threaten "state security" or the "basic values of the Russian state". Such groups and their publications risk being banned in Russia, having their bank accounts blocked and violators face fines or prison terms of up to six years. People cooperating with such entities would also be hit with fines and could be banned from entering Russia, according to the text, which sailed through the two chambers of Russia's parliament. Critics have said the vague wording of the legislation, and a process that bypasses the court system, means that any group or business could be targeted.

I am not defending the Russian actions. I'm just wondering whether we have done all we should to make sure our own laws are not as reactionary.

Public benevolent institutions (‘PBIs’) form a class of not-for-profit (‘NFP’) entities that is entitled to various taxation concessions. The PBI concept was originally adopted in order to deliver selected tax benefits to a narrower group of NFPs than charities, given the wide legal meaning of ‘charitable’. As well as being eligible for income tax exemption like charities, PBIs can be deductible gift recipients (‘DGR’), which means that donors may be able to claim a tax deduction, and are entitled to fringe benefits tax (‘FBT’) exemptions, enabling more attractive employee remuneration packages. For decades, the Australian Taxation Office (‘ATO’) has insisted that PBIs must not only have purposes focused, narrowly, on the relief of poverty, sickness, destitution or helplessness, but that they must also directly provide relief to those suffering from such poverty, sickness, destitution or helplessness. The recent Full Federal Court decision of Commissioner of Taxation v Hunger Project Australia (‘Hunger Project’) clearly states that there is no such ‘direct’ requirement. The development is relevant for a range of state and federal taxes and is expected to have a large impact on federal revenue. This is due to the fact that the primary tax concessions relating to PBIs, the FBT exemption and DGR status, are currently in excess of $2 billion. The ‘cost’ of those concessions will likely increase with the broadening of the classes of entities that fall into the PBI category.

The objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the main problems in the taxation — regarding both taxes themselves and compliance costs of taxation — of civil society organizations in Brazil. This study is qualitative descriptive research. A multiple case study with 26 organizations was performed. The results show that the problems mainly affect organizations with lower revenue and that do not work in the areas of education, health or social care. The main problems involve the taxation of the payroll and the difficulties related to obtaining and maintaining certifications. The study concludes with suggestions for the improvement of the regulatory framework.

Contradictions exist because of the Foreign NGO Law and its intersection with the more recently available draft Charity Law released by the government, which I have been invited to comment on. The Charity Law draft is extremely supportive of philanthropy, while the Foreign NGO Law is repressive towards foreign NGOs that provide funding to domestic organizations carrying out certain types of activity, such as rights advocacy. The draft Charity Law requires the government to do many things to foster charity, even going so far as to encourage schools to educate the young about the subject (this is China, after all!).

There has been a drumbeat of allegations in Canada that the Canada Revenue Agency is targeting left-leaning charities for special scrutiny with respect to their alleged political activity. The latest group to make this assertion is Sierra Club Canada Foundation, which according to a CBCNews report expected auditors to arrive at its offices this week to look for evidence of political activity exceeding the permitted 10 percent level for Canadian charities. Concerns about such audits began in 2012, when 60 political audits of charities began that allegedly disproportionately hit environmental and other left-leaning charities. In 2014 the National Post reported that more than 400 academics had demanded the end of a CRA audit focused on the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and last month CBCNews reported on a Steelworkers charity protesting being subject to a similar audit (hat tip: David Herzig).

According to the various press reports, the National Revenue Minister has repeatedly denied any bias in audit selection, stating that CRA officials make such decisions independently of political appointees. As in the United States, CRA is not able to comment on specific audits because of tax law confidentiality rules. A left-leaning think tank has called for an independent probe, however, asserting that right-leaning charities with apparent political involvement appear to have escaped scrutiny (see also CBCNews report). There does not appear to be an investigative body, such as the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration in the U.S., that is well positioned to engage in such a probe, however (Canadian readers, please correct me if I am wrong on this point).